I don’t buy it. ESPN wants that conversation to happen. They love debate. The last thing they’d want to do is cut away from a serious, possibly-substantive argument. Seems like a production error was made somewhere along the line (possibly even locally wherever this YouTube-r lived).

Ultimately, Bayless got to make his (silly) point and Smith rebutted it.

It doesn’t even seem like Bayless noticed he was temporarily off the air since he just tweeted his thoughts later as if nothing happened:

It’s (again) a ridiculous argument to make. There are lots of Christian athletes in the NFL. But Tebow wears his faith on his sleeve (or his wristband) as if he’s more interesting in winning converts than games. That makes it fair game for criticism.

Of course, touting his faith has hardly been a bad thing for him. Christians love him even more for doing it and Tebow’s suffered no real penalties for broadcasting his faith.

If he were Muslim or an atheist and did the same things, I doubt he’d get away with any of this.